When I woke up, I immediately noticed something was different. To begin with, the sky had gotten quite a bit darker. It wasn’t quite night yet, but it was clearly approaching that time soon. On top of that, everything was still. Before, everything had been moving by at a decent pace, but now the only movement was that of the waves crashing above me.

I slowly rose from my sleeping position to find that I had been lying on the edge of a large cliff that led down in to a dark chasm. It wasn’t the most welcoming sight, but it also was not even close to my biggest concern right now. I had a moment of panic before quickly realizing that I could in fact breathe underwater right now. That still didn’t clear up and was only replaced by the rising fear of the location of my friends. I whipped my head around wildly, but no one was around.

All around me was nothing but rocks and some very sparse schools of fish. Even worse than the lack of anything was the shuddering realization that I had no idea where I was or how to get back to the city. Worse still, I didn’t even know what direction to head. I was completely lost in the middle of a foreign ocean with probably plenty of creatures that could swallow me whole. Especially right now with my essence supply pretty low. Despite that, I had to at least try and find my way back.

I flicked my hand to activate my eyes. I watched as blue auras began to pop up everywhere. The biggest problem right now was the fact that I was so far away from the city, any large mass of auras may look similar to that of a nearby school of fish. It would probably be a smarter idea to simply look for the massive aura of Pototangaros that was tied to the city itself.

I concentrated, attempting to refine my vision down to only much stronger auras. As I saw more and more auras disappear, I saw something else begin to take form that I was not at all expecting. Directly in front of my face was a strange mass of glowing blue essence that didn’t seem to be attached to anything. It extended up and down for a bit and was strangely spread out. I swam backwards to attempt to see it in its entirety. Once I did, my stomach sank.

The strange mass of essence was a message. Someone had counted on me using my observer’s eye to try and find my way back and they’d left me a grim message.

“Avien, we have captured your friends. If you wish to ever see them alive once more, you will come to the collapsed tunnel. If you bring help, your friends will die.”

I couldn’t believe what I was reading. And then things started to make sense. I had been feeling extremely nauseous and lightheaded ever since we left the village. I had thought it was from essence overuse, but it was probably from some kind of apprentice intentionally messing with my head. They had probably waited for me to eventually fall asleep before finally capturing the rest of the group. The real question was, who was strong enough to take them all out? We had all been pretty fatigued, but if they were able to capture all six of them, there was no way I stood a chance against them. And what did this person want from me anyway?

I was beginning to panic again. I had to control my breathing and calm down or I was going to pass out again. Passing out was not a good thing to do right now considering I had no idea how long this person would be waiting for me to come find them.

I got control over my breathing and began to think. If this person had been able to take out all six of them, they were either very powerful or very smart... or both. I most likely wouldn’t be able to beat them in a fight, if it came to that. Unfortunately, not knowing what this person wanted from me was a serious disadvantage, at the moment because it meant that I didn’t know what I should be preparing for. And to make matters worse, I had to go alone, not that I could probably get anyone to help even if I could somehow find my way back to the city and through the labyrinth.

It would be very unlikely that this person simply wanted to have a chat, but if they did want to fight, I would lose. I was extremely low on essence right now and any wind magic down here would require immense concentration and the creation of more air to use. If I could use my eyes properly, I may have had a chance, but they were still too difficult to control. However, there was one eye that I hadn’t used. One more weapon I had at my disposal. The only real question was whether or not he was going to cooperate.

I was about to sit down before I felt searing pain coursing through my left eye. I collapsed to the ground as images flashed inside of my head. A scarf. A top hat. Piercing green eyes and a wicked smile. It had been so long since I’d been hit with a set of visions, I’d almost forgotten what it felt like. These ones were worse though. They hurt like hell and were far more disorienting. Hopefully, that meant that I would find out what they meant and they would stop soon. It would certainly be nice if they actually showed me something useful for once, like the location of my friends.

Now that the pain had past, I sank to the ground, crossing my legs and closing my eyes. I began to focus on my breathing. In. Out. In. Out. I envisioned a doorway and a door. I opened the door and opened my eyes. On the other side of the door was nothing but familiar darkness. I closed the door and made my way forwards. As always, light rippled with every step. They would stretch out in to the darkness, fading with every inch in to the inky black floor. Maybe someday I would figure out what exactly this place was made of.

I continued on in the darkness for a while before I even saw the remnants of anything. It was annoying to always enter so far away from where I needed to get to. All around me were what looked like dozens of blast marks. Each of them purple and rippling just below the surface of the floor. They vaguely glowed and cast a strange light across me as I walked past them. I could certainly figure out who they came from, but that certainly didn’t explain to me why they were there in the first place. They were scattered everywhere with no real rhyme or reason to them.

It always concerned me when I couldn’t figure out what he was doing or why he was doing it. Having a psychopath inside of your head being unpredictable was not a comforting thought.

As I continued to walk, the blast marks began to get more and more frequent. As opposed to the one or two ever couple feet, there were now almost 3 every foot. I was actually a bit scared to find the source given the destruction it was causing. In the distance, I could see a bright purple light rapidly flashing and changing shape. I reluctantly continued to walk. I’d come this far and I did have a purpose being here that I had not yet fulfilled.

Unsurprisingly, once I got close enough, I found that the source of the light and the blast marks was none other than the purple demon himself. However, the more accurate source was what surrounded him. On the floor, just underneath him, there was a large purple seal that was generating a sort of cage. Surrounding Sylak on all sides were crackling bolts of purple lightning that swayed and arced wildly. Massive bolts of purple lightning were flying in all directions, emanating from the lightning cage. Each time they hit the ground, they scorched it exactly like the other blast marks all around us. Some of them would actually fire off from the cage and strike the ground in the distance.

I slowly made my way over to the cage, but as soon as I did, it flared up and grew larger. From underneath Sylak, I could see small ripples of light surrounding him which I could only guess were from him shaking. I stepped back and the cage returned to its previous, slightly more tame, mayhem.

“Syalk!” I shouted over the crackling of the lightning.

He turned around briefly to look at me, but his face was somehow too dark to see. After looking me over, he returned to sitting with his back turned to me. I growled before beginning to walk towards him again. I focused on the arcs of lightning and then my vision and the speed of movement in front of me. My vision flickered green once. Then again. It continued to flicker green over and over again until, finally, it slowed. Unfortunately, because of the speed of the lightning, even at a tenth of its usual speed, it still moved incredibly fast. I was actually able to vaguely follow and avoid it now though.

I saw a slight glow of purple surrounding Sylak begin to expand. Eventually, it exploded outwards and my vision looked normal, but the lightning still was moving in “slow” motion. He turned to face me, but his face was still shrouded in darkness. With every step towards him, more bolts of lightning appeared.

“Why are you here?”

I stopped, sighing. “I think I might need your help soon.”

“Go away. I don’t want to help you.”

I shrugged. “You may not want to help me, but it may give you a chance to kill some people.”

He slightly perked up at this, but remained sitting. “And why, my good little kitten, would you allow me to do that?”

“Because someone kidnapped my friends,” I answered.

“My my. That’s a bit grim for you to let me kill someone just for that. However, considering you’re asking for my help, things must be quite desperate.”

I sank to my feet. “Yeah... They took the whole group, most likely, on their own. There’s no way I could beat them.”

He let out a slight chuckle at that. “God, you’re pathetic and sure, I’d love to kill some people, but I won’t do it.”

“But you just said you’d-”

He glared at me. “I said I’d love to, not that I would do it,” he huffed before sitting back down.

That was when I realized that something had to be wrong. Never had I heard or even conceived of Sylak passing up the opportunity to kill someone. I wasn’t exactly super on board with the idea of turning him loose on someone, but I also wasn’t completely against it either. This person or potentially, group of people, had kidnapped my friends and threatened to kill them. They had run my patience quite thin at this point.

“What’s wrong?”

His ears perked up at this, but he didn’t turn to face me. “You don’t really care, so don’t pretend like you do.”

He did, unfortunately, have me there. I didn’t exactly care about it for his sake. I was mostly just curious since I’d never seen him like this. “Well, you’re not really wrong about that, but I don’t have to care for you to talk to me about your problems. Talking is very helpful. I can speak on that from experience.”

He turned a bit before shaking his head and turning back. “That doesn’t matter. Just go away.”

I moved to put my hand on his shoulder, but the second my hand passed through the cage, he spun on me, sending a blast of lightning directly in to my chest, sending me backwards. In the brief moment I saw his face, I could see tears running down from his eyes. He was crying.

I picked myself up and brushed myself off before walking away, my vision returning to normal as a door appeared in front of me. I opened it and walked through. “Goodbye, Sylak.”